Archive for August 2015

For more than a year, our website has been posting a Quarterly Research Report featuring the most notable scholarship we’ve found in procedural fairness and procedural justice. The report is edited by Justine Greve, M.A., a staff member at the Kansas Court of Appeals, and Shelley Spacek Miller, J.D., a staff member at the National Center for State Courts.
The Summer 2015 report has just been posted, and one interesting study compares views about police legitimacy among residents of St. Louis County, Missouri, in interviews taken before and after the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown. Researchers from Southern Illinois University Carbondale had done extensive interviews of nearly 400 people living in high-crime and disadvantaged parts of St. Louis County for a study on policing in 2012 and 2013. Most of the respondents in that survey lived within six miles of where Brown was killed. So the researchers followed up with new interviews of the same people in September and October 2014 to compare public perceptions before and after Brown’s shooting.
The 2014 questioning came immediately after protests, looting, and violence that followed the Brown shooting. The interviews asked questions related to police legitimacy (defined by the researchers as “a view that police authority is valid and to be respected and adhered to”) and to trust in police and procedural justice (defined by the researchers as “a belief that police act fairly, impartially, and respectfully”).
Overall, perceptions of both police legitimacy and trust/procedural justice declined (by 5% and 17% respectively). But the perception rose slightly for nonblack residents (up 2% for each) while falling significantly (by 8% and 26%) for African-American respondents. Views also diverged in feelings about the public and police responses. A majority of nonblack respondents disagreed with the public’s response to the shooting, while a majority of blacks agreed with it. A majority of nonblack respondents agreed with the police response to protests, looting, and riots in the area, while a majority of black respondents did not.
This study, of course, captures views from only a small geographical area, but the respondents certainly intensely experienced the events of that time. It’s one of many new research articles and reports that you can find in the latest Quarterly Research Report.